


better versus best

by emblems



Series: SASO2016 [14]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Injury, M/M, POV Second Person, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emblems/pseuds/emblems
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>sent into something that resembles a panic, you review:</p>
  <p>a) you want to be the best.<br/>b) you have to be better than oikawa.</p>
  <p>b is a necessary circumstance to achieve a. </p>
</blockquote><p>turns out things are more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better versus best

**Author's Note:**

> remix of [this fill](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/13854.html?thread=5092126#cmt5092126) in saso bonus round 2, by my wonderful friend [serena](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sotong_sotong).

you wanted to be better. you always wanted that, you  _do_  want that, you think—it's simple, right? oikawa is good, the best, and you want to be the best. ergo, you want to be better than oikawa. a simple chain of events, one part of the proof leading into the next.  
  
and yet.  
  
now, you find yourself looking at these two things:  
  
a) being the best  
b) being better than oikawa  
  
they're not mutually exclusive. with one comes the other. that's unavoidable—utterly and totally. but.  
  
but, but, but.   
  
you've envisioned the first so many a time. so, so many.   
  
but the second? you can barely even begin to wrap your mind around the possibility. since your first year, since you first stepped foot on the court at kitagawa daiichi, you have been following oikawa tooru's trail, trying to keep pace, nipping at his heels but never quite being able to surpass him.  
  
it's kept you going, pushed one foot in front of the other. at karasuno, he's surrounded by at least a dozen new reasons to keep pushing, to be the best, and they are good and sincere reasons, reasons that make you better. hinata's determination, suga-san's faith, even tsukishima's needling—the list goes on and on, and you want to be able to stitch that together, to help make this team come together and  _fly_.  
  
despite all of that—or maybe because of that, because if oikawa excels at anything it's making a team come together and  _sing_ , so it's yet one more way you're following oikawa's example, trailing after him, again—oikawa tooru remains in the back of your mind, his figure looming in your periphery.  
  
or, perhaps more accurately: looming in front of you—still, always.  
  
it's because of all of this—everything you've ever known, about yourself, about oikawa, about oikawa and you and you and oikawa—considering the alternative (and it is the only alternative, you think), it's. well.  _foreign_  would be putting it mildly.  
  
so when you overhear seijou's coach ask oikawa about his ankle, hear the concern, the alternative (being the best and being  _better_ ) seem all the more real, all the more feasible.  
  
close enough to reach out and touch, to take in your hands and even taste.  
  
you imagined it would look more like victory, but—  
  
this is too sudden. too quick. too soon. it wasn't supposed to happen like this, you think, not because of an injury—  
  
that's not how you want this to go. it's— _wrong._  
  
sent into something that resembles a panic, you review:  
  
a) you want to be the best.  
b) you have to be better than oikawa.  
  
b is a necessary circumstance to achieve a.   
  
but when you watch oikawa's jump serve, faultless and breathtaking and carving a path forward—  
  
_powerful_ , you think, is the word to describe the feeling coursing through you. 

to be better meant he would be  _moving forward_ instead of  _chasing after_. to eclipse oikawa would mean he could move on. 

but, then, what would he have to reach for?  
  
(months later, looking down at oikawa through the net, it's not only power, the feeling of being emboldened—there'll be a touch of gratitude, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> this was basically one giant expansion on the following line from serena's original fill:
>
>> (Yet Tobio’s heart still jerks within when he overheard Coach Mizoguchi asking about Oikawa’s ankle earlier, and some things are just that hard to break free from, aren’t they?)


End file.
